


Trivial

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - No Kaiju, Christmas, Crime Family AU, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Holiday Fic Exchange, Multi, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 00:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: It was tradition to converge on Vivianne's house for the Christmas season. The crowning competitive event of this was, of course, pub trivia.Raleigh edged closer to let a waitress pass between him and a table. “What’s the matter, Chuck? Stakes not high enough for you?”Chuck shook his head. “Losing team does clean-up Christmas night. Whatever.”“All right then.” Raleigh stepped in closer. No waitress this time: he just wanted to get into Chuck’s space. “Maybe a private wager’s in order. You can even set the terms.”





	Trivial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WeekendWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeekendWriter/gifts).



> The prompt was: 'holiday and winter activities'. Hope this is fitting!
> 
> As usual, apologies but I REALLY can't do Chaleigh, so I also hope that Chakoleigh with a heavy emphasis on the Ch-leigh will do.  
> Also shenanigans, and improbable appearances by other cast members.

At the end of every year - after contracts were filled, checks cleared, agendas arranged for January - it was tradition for everyone to converge in York, England, at the Pentecost-Sevier-Mori compound and celebrate Christmas as a unit. (London having become unfriendly to Vivianne after her husband's death, she had retreated to her childhood home and quietly converted an old barn on the property to a safe house.)

The critical competitive milestone was, of course, Pub Trivia.

Mako, Raleigh, and Chuck arrived late, accompanied by a flurry of snow and cold that drew dirty looks from patrons seated nearest the door. All three were red-cheeked and damp from the unusual snow clotting the skies: a day trip to Manchester had turned frosty with the unexpected downfall, and then they had needed to return to the guesthouse to change clothes. Mako had given her room at Vivianne’s house to Herc and Angela. Stacker wasn’t up to much to-ing and fro-ing in the cold any more than Tamsin these days and three grown adults could not fit in the bed he occupied at Vivianne’s.)

The pub was gold-lit and heaving: a dull roar of laughter, conversation, and clinking glass filled it to the roof. The rafters were hung with garlands and tinsel; golden baubles clustered over every table; and be-ribboned clumps of pinecones and poinsettias made festive centrepieces. Pints of mulled wine and hot spiced apple juice zipped overhead borne by waitstaff in festive headbands, and someone had put a Santa hat on the deer head over the fireplace.

Raleigh scanned the tables. Soo-Yi stood up practically on her chair to wave to him across the room: most of the others were already seated in their usual two tables under a decorative overhang. Angela, Herc, Stacker, and Tamsin sat at the heads of the two tables with their backs to the wall like reigning monarchs. 

Raleigh tamped down the useless part of him that mused that this would make a messed-up version of Narnia if ever he’d seen one, and waved back to Soo-Yi. 

The trio picked their way over, dodging an elf laden with steaming wine.

Sasha broke off her conversation with Tamsin with a wide red-lipped smile. "We thought you might miss the party." The Kaidonovskies hadn’t been on Mako and Raleigh’s team for four years: it wasn’t comradely concern that sparkled in her eyes.

Cheung rapped his knuckles on the second table. “Good thing you’re here. So far all we’ve got are Alison, the Hansens Senior, and a bunch of AWOLs.”

“Yeah, we might be good,” said Hu, “but they’ve got Marshal, Tamsin, Cherno, Hyperion, and the Dynamic Duo. And Missus Gottlieb,” he added smoothly, when Vanessa side-eyed him. “Who of course is a team unto herself.”

Between Sasha and Stacker, Tamsin set down her pint so hard it sloshed. “Oi, I demand to be recognised as a team unto myself as well.”

“You will be a team unto yourself if you don’t slow down on the sauce,” Stacker told her. To Mako he said, "The roads caused you trouble?”

“Wall to wall bloody ice,” Chuck started, “all the way from Leeds—”

Jin and Aleksis returned from the bar carrying a tray apiece. Raleigh lifted a hot apple juice from Jin’s and pushed it at Chuck. “Why don’t you tell your dad about the Lockheed in Manchester.”

Chuck looked at the glass in distaste but he wasn’t supposed to drink with his medication so he dropped into an empty chair and turned to his father. Angela adjusted her hearing aid and leaned forward. She had survived the explosion that had put her off running field ops alongside her husband, but it hadn’t left her unscathed. (Nor had the Syndicate’s revenge left much of the Kaiju Cartel's Johannesburg branch.)

Aleksis very carefully edged around Hermann and Vanessa to his seat beside Sasha.

“Haven’t we started yet?” Mako asked Vanessa.

“The preliminaries are over,” said Vanessa. “But there was a slight hiccup. Tendo is MC’ing now.”

“R.I.P. our modern history points,” said Alison mournfully, raising her wine to her husband where he stood on a dais by the stairs in conference with the pub manager.

“I’ve got us covered there,” said Raleigh, “but since when is Tendo allowed to MC a Trivia game we’re competing in?”

Newt rocked his chair back on two legs and sucked in his cheeks. “Well, see, there was kinda a punch-up between the regular MC and another old-timer.”

“Something in the nature of a tractor parked between two properties and person to whom the laneway belonged to,” Hermann said drily. “Now will you sit properly, Newton? You are hardly a puerile Grad student anymore—”

“Speak for yourself, Methuselah!” 

“I take back the ‘hardly puerile’ qualifier.”

They went off on another quarrel.

“Wait,” said Raleigh to Mako, “what’re the teams this year? I mean, Yance and Naomi bowed out to go to the pantomime with Vivianne and the kids, yeah, but..?”

Mako was surveying the seats. “Where are Duke and Kaori?” she asked Alison.

“Side-tracked,” said Alison wryly.

“Duke’s family in Cambridge heard that he and Kaori were making the trek out this year,” said Vanessa. “They demanded a visit.”

“An extremely inconvenient visit,” said Jin.

“Family’s important,” said Hu.

“Not on Trivia night.”

Cheung gave them both another beer before they could join tech support in arguing through Trivia.

“So,” said Raleigh, “who’s sitting where?”

“You’re both sitting here,” said Cheung.

Chuck’s head swivelled around. “There’re three of us.”

Jin shrugged. “You’re with the boss.”

“But—”

Tendo tapped his microphone. “Sorry about the delay, folks! For those concerned: both lads are okay, they’re just out back cooling off!” He dipped his head to Mako and Raleigh, acknowledging them without telegraphing it. “All right now: ladies, gentlemen, and folks who don’t subscribe to a binary, we’re ready to begin. Shake out your trivia muscles, dust off that holiday knowledge, get those fingers warmed up—” He winked at Alison, who smirked, “—and if you’re all settled, we’ll begin!”

Cheung held up a hand. “Hold on.” 

“We’re still negotiating teams,” Alison called.

Tendo sighed. “There’s always one,” he said to the crowd. 

The trio shuffled seats. To keep things fair, partners were kept on the same team as much as possible. (The Weis, Soo-Yi and Yuna, and Duke and Kaori all having variously screwed their team’s pooch with what Chuck called ‘couple’s hivemind’.) Though the roster rotated every year, there were certain combinations that had previously exploded, and with numerous players absent… 

They played verbal musical chairs through several iterations until Stacker cleared his throat.

“Mako: you and Raleigh sit with that team. Yuna, Soo-Yi, please join them. When Kaori and Duke arrive, they can join our team.”

The named dutifully re-arranged themselves. Tendo, meanwhile, ran an impromptu comedy act with a heckler who chose to pick on his hairstyle. Alison watched the heckler closely over the rim of her wineglass. 

Angela nudged her. “If you want help hiding the body, I know where Vivianne keeps the shovels.”

Allison chuckled.

“Chuck, this team,” Stacker said when Chuck made no move to switch tables.

Chuck scowled. “But I always—” 

Angela and Herc gave the ceiling identical long-suffering looks.

“It evens the numbers,” said Hermann with the impatience of a lecturer addressing a recalcitrant student.

“I’m already—”

Raleigh gave Chuck a very calculated smirk, partly his own, partly modelled off one Mako used for this exact purpose. “What’s the matter, Charlie? Don’t think you can hack it if me an’ Mako are on the opposing team?”

Chuck bit off whatever he was going to say and hiked both eyebrows in a look so reminiscent of Herc that Mako hid a smile. “Oh, that’s how it’s going to be?” Chuck said to Raleigh.

Raleigh grinned. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

Theatrically, Chuck stood up, moved his jacket to the back of the empty chair beside Stacker, and sat down. “All right. Prepare to be annihilated, seppo.”

“Steady on with ‘we’, mate,” said Tamsin dryly, reaching for a new apple juice. “You only jus’ got ‘ere.”

“My body is prepared,” Raleigh said sincerely, and Angela slapped him lightly with the back of her hand.

“Make a good pair, you two do. I hope you’re getting something good out of taking on the pair of them,” she said to Mako. “Right cheeky bastards, they are.”

“There are benefits,” Mako said demurely.

“Are we ready?” Tendo asked sardonically over the microphone. 

Allison and Tamsin gave him simultaneous thumbs up. 

“Excellent,” he chirruped. “Okay, folks, pick your scribes and steady those pencils! We’re going to start with an easy one. Let’s get trivial!”

“Every flippin’ time,” Alison muttered.

Aleksis had the loveliest handwriting of Stacker’s team (Sasha was banned after an Incident six years back); for Mako and Raleigh’s team, Herc took up the pen because he had learned it was the best way to stop people pestering him to answer silly questions about TV shows and pop stars.

“Round One,” said Tendo. “Geography!”

“Oh!” squeaked Soo-Yi and wriggled to the very edge of her seat. “We got this in the bag!”

“You said that two years ago,” Yuna murmured.

“Yeah,” said Soo-Yi breezily, “but this year Sasha and Aleksis are on the other team. There will be blood.”

Sasha, who heard this, raised her glass with her shark’s smile.

. . .

“Which two countries,” said Tendo, “celebrate New Year first?”

“Samoa and Kiritbati,” Raleigh said promptly, at the same time Chuck declared,

“Christmas Island.”

Chuck frowned at him. Raleigh returned a broad, shit-eating grin and saluted the Aussie with his pint.

“All right, a few moment to answer that,” Tendo called. 

Tamsin’s phone pinged in her pocket. “Duke says they’ll be here in fifteen,” she reported.

Herc raised his glass at the younger generation with a snort. “Hafta do better than that if they want to avert World War Three over there.” 

“Right! Question four: what country provides the Christmas tree that is placed in Trafalgar Square in London, according to Christmas Tradition?”

. . .

Duke and Kaori arrived for the end of round one with a flurry of snow and Jake Pentecost.

The syndicate missed the penultimate question as Duke negotiated his crutches through the tables and greetings were exchanged, hugs distributed, friendly taunts given for tardiness. 

Jake pulled a spare chair into the space between Newt, the two empties, and Stacker. Chuck looked at the new chair, then at Stacker, and then moved one seat towards Newt.

Stacker stood up to embrace his son. Jake hugged him without hesitation – a new milestone for both – and then leaned past his father to kiss Tamsin on the cheek before sitting.

“Aunt Tams.”

“Nephew Mini-Me.”

“Weren’t expecting you until tomorrow,” Stacker said to Jake.

Jake shrugged. “Finished up that thing with Switch ahead o’ schedule. Thought I'd bring Nan’s present up to her early. Found those two negotiating the ice down the street.”

“Your Nan’ll be over the moon,” said Stacker.

“Stacks,” Tamsin said too patiently, “I’m chuffed he’s here too. But there’s Trivia afoot. We’re missin’ the questions.”

Jake spread his hands in apology and took up a spare pint. “Who’s winning?”

“We are,” said Chuck and Raleigh in unison.

. . .

Soo-Yi and Yuna are unsurprisingly boss at sports, but no one ever expected Kaori’s celebrity knowledge (“I watched _so_ much shitty TV while Duke was in that coma, you have no idea.”) or Hu’s Christmas Carol-fu. Mako and Raleigh’s team took out the Stand Up/ Sit Down Bonus Round by a mile. 

Raleigh’s grin was so cocky Mako kicked him under the table.

. . . 

In the break between rounds, Chuck went to buy the next round of drinks. Raleigh brushed his fingertips over the back of Chuck’s neck just to see him shiver. He grinned when Chuck hardly glanced back. 

“Don’t try to psych me, pretty boy,” Chuck said haughtily. “ ‘m not falling for any of your cheap Yank mind tricks.”

“These aren’t the pints you’re looking for…” They edged into a clear space at the bar and Raleigh propped an elbow on the ledge, his chest to Chuck’s arm. It felt warm through the awful Christmas sweater he and Mako had persuaded Chuck into wearing to match Raleigh. Chuck made a point of ignoring him. (He did not, Raleigh noticed, pull away.)

“Aww, don’t be like that,” Raleigh said affably. “It’s just a little friendly competition. Not like you’re worried about the fact that we’re miles ahead or anything.”

“Keep talking, _Rah_ leigh. We’re going to wipe that smirk off yer face in round two.”

Raleigh edged closer to Chuck to let a waitress pass between him and a packed table. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Tendo followed the waitress through the gap. Both Raleigh and Chuck were too practiced to telegraph their attention fixing on the papers in Tendo’s hand, but Chuck visibly relaxed. His shoulders settled. The tension left his jaw. Raleigh was immediately suspicious.

Chuck gave him a too-nonchalant look over the shoulder. With his face a handspan from Raleigh’s, Raleigh could smell apple juice and nutmeg on his breath. 

“Like you say, mate: it’s just a friendly game. No sense getting wound up.”

Raleigh replayed the last five second in his head, then said: “Oh, so now it’s ‘just a friendly game’? What’s the matter, Chuck? Stakes not high enough for you?”

Chuck shook his head. “Losing team does clean-up Christmas night. Whatever.”

“All right then.” Raleigh stepped in closer; no waitress this time. He just wanted to get into Chuck’s space. “Maybe a private wager’s in order. You can even set the terms.”

Chuck narrowed his eyes, appraising. The cogs near-visibly turned in his head - all the ways Raleigh could turn this, all the things he had done in the past. Then he gave Raleigh a slowly spreading smile, the one that made Raleigh want to drag him to the nearest private place and bruise him up in all the ways that made him moan. “Right-o: loser tops for a week.”

Raleigh blinked. “Loser…”

“You heard me.”

Raleigh thought it through, weighing all the implications. “You’re on.”

“What are we wagering?” said Mako. Neither had heard her move up behind Chuck, nor seen her rise from the table.

Raleigh put an arm around her shoulders and draw her into the space between them. “Chuck’s topping for a week.”

“ _Loser_ tops for a week.”

“That’s what I said.” Raleigh grinned, flashing his eyebrows and grinning more widely at Chuck’s frown as Mako looked from one to the other with one eyebrow curling archly. “Remember: my safeword’s 'apricot'.”

“You,” Chuck said accusingly, “just want to be lazy.”

“I just want to be loved,” Raleigh corrected.

“You’re always loved,” said Chuck, and then went red at the ears. “Right, Mako?” he said, to distract from it.

She butted her head affectionately against Raleigh’s chin. “Of course. Now come on. Tendo's calling the ranking.”

. . . 

Tendo announced the points with fanfare benefitting a national football match, or a multi-million dollar score within the syndicate.

Stacker’s team were down two points. An incorrect answer and a blank had put them behind.

While Aleksis and Sasha gave each other sharp looks, Soo-Yi and Yuna high-fived. 

Opposite them, the Weis looked intensely smug, exchanging less overt but equally casual nods and smirks.

Duke put his thumb to his oxygen mask and wiggled his fingers at them.

. . . 

Round Two was language themed.

Newt crowed when Tendo asked what famous carol was called ‘Stille Nacht’ in German.  Hermann looked embarrassed to sit next to him.

Alison, who spoke German to communicate with her European and Brazilian networks, informed Herc of the answer with considerably less fanfare. Hu nodded.

Which popular Christmas song included the lyrics “Oh, ho, the mistletoe, hung where you can see” caused them all more grief. 

Chuck and Raleigh glanced at each other with mirrored expressions of something niggling at their memory, but escaping them. 

Neither Hu nor Aleksis had any idea, despite the Russian being known to blare bizarrely cheerful holiday-season songs in his office from the first of December. None of that really mattered while Herc, Stacker, and Angela were giving each other significant looks.

Their children looked between them with confusion until—

Angela laughed out loud. She could pinpoint the exact moment the trio remembered where they had heard it before: Chuck’s face went white, Mako sipped her wine, and Raleigh cleared his throat and asked Cheung if he’d had any epiphanies about the question the team hadn’t come up with an answer for. Never again had Chuck banged into the Hansens’ Copenhagen apartment without knocking: the last time had involved _Holly Jolly Christmas_ blaring and Stacker, Herc, and Angela _en flagrant_ on the living room rug.

. . . 

In the break, Mako, Vanessa, and Alison discussed an upcoming contract with a new client in Myanmar. Religious artefact: always a divisive area.Jin and Hu went to work a little holiday charm on the wait staff and see who would be up for a nightcap. Cheung and Herc argued motorbikes.Raleigh doodled on a napkin. 

When Chuck turned back to his drink from asking Duke how his leg was healing, a cute little cartoon apricot blew a kiss from the napkin folded by his coaster. Scowling, he swivelled in his seat.

Raleigh gave him a double thumbs up and a shit-eating grin.

Chuck tossed the scrunched-up napkin into his face.

. . . 

This time the tally put Stacker’s team ahead by a point. (This, despite Newt nearly getting into a scrap with another table, and Sasha threatening to gag him with an apple if he shrieked the answers like that again.)

Raleigh managed not to grin at Chuck after Mako raised her eyebrows at him, but it was a close thing. Chuck pointedly turned his back and bit a pretzel in half.

. . . 

Things got tense in the final round.

“Which famous character,” Tendo read, “was visited by the Ghosts of the Christmas past, present, and yet to come?”

“Bob Marley,” Duke said laconically. Half of the players snorted; Newt actually squirted wine out his nose and then cursed and whined. Vanessa handed Hermann a napkin to blot his sleeve, and then Newt another to wipe his streaming eyes.

. . .

“Name all eight of the original reindeer— _all eight_ , folks. No cheating with doubles, no half points for some of them—”

“Where’s your Christmas spirit?” shouted Alison.

“This coffee’s Irish,” Tendo retorted, raising his mug from the sideboard. “I’m spirited to the hilt. Now pipe down or you’re getting coal for Christmas. My gorgeous wife, lords, ladies, and lovelies. Right, question four: name all eight of the original reindeer who pull Santa’s sleigh.”

“Do you remember getting snarky at the lads from your school because they were giving you heaps about your Nan doing a Vixen routine?” Stacker asked Jake.

“I remember giving them a proper pasting a few years later because they still wouldn’t give it a rest,” Jake replied over the rim of his glass.

Tamsin snorted into her juice.

Stacker looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to reprimand the unrepentance or let it slide, but he settled for an accepting nod. “Bunch of little shits,” he said reflectively.

. . .

“Only two more questions and the bonus round, folks,” cried Tendo. “We’re getting down to it now. Okay, Question seven: what… was the name of the Grinch’s dog?”

Herc groaned. “Oh, don’t start him off.”

Mako leaned over to Raleigh and murmured, “When we were kids, we used to call Chuck ‘the Grinch’.”

Chuck shot her a stare of pure ‘ _don’t even’_.

“Jake loved the movie,” Herc told Raleigh. “So they watched it every Christmas because he was the littlest.”

“And every year,” Angela added, “Charlie pitched a fit about having to get into the Christmas spirit. Even used to steal the Christmas decorations and hide them under his bed so he didn’t have to help put up the tree.”

“ _Mum_ —”

“Remember that year he tried to sneak into that fancy Christmas party through the window,” Jin asked. “And the tree fell on him?”

“And then he declared Christmas was off for the office, and went around dismantling all of our decorations?” said Hu. 

“Oh, yeah,” said Cheung blissfully. “That was the year we put food colouring in his face-wash.”

Chuck glowered at them.

“We had a Skype meeting with a client,” Mako told Raleigh. “Chuck didn’t realise he was green until the client told him.”

The Weis openly cackled. 

“Don’t look so sour, Hansen,” purred Sasha to Chuck. “Green is definitely your colour.”

“ 'Max'," said Vanessa genteelly, amid the laughter. “Aleksis, please write ‘Max’.”

. . .

“Okay, folks, you know the drill,” announced Tendo. “Bonus question! The last one for this year’s End of Year Trivia, last chance to pull up any lagging numbers! It’s worth double points, this one,” Tendo added temptingly. “This is a history one. Who… did Santa Claus punch in the face at the Council of Nicaea?” 

There was a long, tense pause. Everyone in the pub processed the question.

“The what?”

“Who?”

“Wait, but Santa Claus isn’t—”

“Wasn’t that that religious meeting where a bunch of old dudes decided what was going to be in the Bible and what wasn’t?”

Chuck’s crow of triumph was very distinctive. “HA! I know this one!”

Raleigh thought very hard about what he did next. He looked at Chuck; he looked at Mako. He looked at Angela and Herc, paying no attention to the Trivia game and apparently discussing fire safety systems in Spain. And then—

. . . 

After everything, they tied for second and third. Jin, who had known the answer to the last bonus question, hadn’t been enough to compensate for their Round Two performance, and the team that won comprised of eight locals who had been coming to trivia every Wednesday for seven years. Mako still laughed all the way to the car.

The local team walked away with the money prize for first place. For their pains, the PPDC groups split vouchers for food and drink. They also took home a set of movie tickets collectively agreed to be a gift to Vivianne for minding young Mister Choi and Miss Gottlieb.

Back at the guesthouse, the trio toed off their shoes just inside the suite, dissecting answers and swapping other random trivia.

When Raleigh and Chuck stalled by the door arguing over how many times the Gävle Goat had burned down and if arson counted, Mako went ahead. She shed layers as she went.

“Anyway,” Raleigh said eventually. “Equal split. Shoulda seen that coming.”

“Well we didn’t take it into account when we shook on terms, did we,” said Chuck. “So now what?”

Mako reappeared. In her hands was a wide, flat box wrapped in heavy-gauge gold paper. “Now…” She drew the separately-wrapped lid off the box. “--I top.”

The men stared.

“Alison gave me this a little early." She tilted it to show them the contents. “To all of us, from her and Tendo. Finish undressing.” The last carried an air of command.

The men looked at the box and then each other and then hurried to shuck the rest of their clothing.


End file.
